For Jon who says “You completely ignore getting to a smokefree society” and Lisa who says “Why should bystanders have to choose the lesser of two evils when we can have no evil at all ?

WHAT DREAMERS!!

Until we get to a completely electrical society, furnished entirely by clean alternative energy sources this Utopia that you describe, can NEVER be realized!

Every breath that a person takes, contains the VERY SAME toxic chemicals that are found in cigarette smoke This material is pumped in some instances, BY THE TONS into the air, every day.

The Goverment and “so call HEALTH ORGANIZATIONS” would better spend their resources, trying to combat this isssue, but it can’t be stopped because the world runs on “Combustable energy”

For electricman who posted this link

This article is a farce it says absolutely nothing only a lot of maybe’s, possibly’s, could be’s, and other nothingness it appears to be published by the American Lung Association, who gets MAJOR funding from the pharmaceutical companies who make the “Stop Smoking” products that they tout on their website as the Only “Approved” way to quit smoking. See any conflicts of interest here???? They give NO LINK or information for the so called “Study” and it goes against YEARS of studies that show NO HARM from nicotine

For all who quote the worn out figures of “19% of the population dies from smoking” or “440,000 a year, die from smoking” (this figture equals approx. 18% of the population) Have you ever stopped to think that approx. 21 percent of the population (from around 2000 til now) smoke??? Let’s see 21 percent of the population smokes and 18% to 19% of the population die from smoking sounds almost proportional to me I say almost, but in detail, it means that the smoking population actually slightly outlives their non smoking counterparts.

For all who would say “well OK but smokers die miserable deaths” or “smokers have more chronic problems befor they die” this Surgeon Generals report, says differently looking at the figures, you will see that those who smoke a half pack or less a day actually have LESS chronic problems than non smokers do and those who smoke a pack a day have about the same (in some cases only SLIGHTLY MORE) chronic problems than non smokers do. It is only when you get above a pack a day, that th problems start No wonder it’s not published with all the rest of the Surgeon Generals’ reports!!!

We have been “hoodwinked” on the whole “Smoking/SHS” issue and this is the ONLY reason that electronic cigaretts exist.

With that said E Cigs have been instrumental in getting “Litterally” Millions of people to quit smoking, world wide because of that these people have become healthier and happier people aqnd have been able to move from the “Sub Class Smoker” to the position of “Normalcy” that they once held. They now don’t have to pay twice the taxes that “Normal” people do They now can get insurance, at the same price “Normal” people do, They now don’t have to live with the threat of children taken away, They can socialize like “Normal” people, Etc., Etc.

Whether they are better for the invironment, than cigarettes I can’t say for sure But for people thay are a “Win/Win”

Fda’s tobacco panel targets menthol cigarettes : npr

Are menthol cigarettes which account for one quarter of U.S. cigarette sales more addictive than other smokes? That’s a top question facing the FDA’s new advisory committee on tobacco regulation, which is meeting for the first time Tuesday. It’s tasked with determining whether menthols should be treated differently from regular tobacco.

After Congress shifted the authority to regulate tobacco products to the Food and Drug Administration, one of its first actions was to ban clove, cinnamon and other candy flavored cigarettes. It was a small market, and the cigarettes were sold primarily to young people.

Matthew Myers of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids says it was easy for the FDA to ban the candy flavored tobacco.

“The products it banned had very few users and no sustained users,” he says, “so it wasn’t concerned about what would happen if you instantly withdrew them.”

On the other hand, millions of Americans buy menthol cigarettes, which make up more than one fourth of the industry’s $70 billion in sales.

In fact, a recent survey showed that nearly half of teenagers light up a menthol when they start to smoke. And it’s not just teenagers 75 percent of black smokers, compared with 25 percent of white smokers, prefer menthol.

“What we aren’t certain of Is it because menthol makes it easier to smoke because it coats your throat, or is there some other reason?” Myers says. “The advantage to FDA looking at this is that they will examine the science in its totality and give us an answer to that question once and for all.”

There are studies that show that African Americans tend to smoke fewer cigarettes yet suffer more smoking related health problems, and have greater difficulty in quitting. Historical documents show that the African American community was in fact targeted by the industry.

Congress ordered the new Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee to study marketing, addiction and health effects to determine whether menthol should be treated differently from regular tobacco. There’s a 180 page list of studies that committee members will have a chance to discuss over the next two days. They’ll find there is very little consensus.

“It’s a very subtle issue,” says Andrew Hyland of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y. He followed 13,000 smokers for five years to see whether menthol made cigarettes more addictive, for example. He found no difference between menthol and regular cigarettes.

“The products themselves are engineered to be addictive and to suck money out of their consumers’ pockets, basically,” Hyland says. The menthol, he concluded, was just a marketing tool.

“Does it have an extra addictive effect? Perhaps it does, but the answer to that question is fundamentally not that important relative to the broader issue of why is menthol in these products to begin with?” Hyland says. “It’s no different than putting cinnamon flavor in products to make them more attractive to would be smokers.”

Oddly enough, Hyland’s study is cited by the tobacco industry because he found that regular and menthol smokers quit at about the same rate.

Lorillard Tobacco Co. makes Newport, which has the largest share of the market. Lorillard said in a written statement that menthol has been used for decades in food, drink, cosmetics and other products. And a spokesman for Philip Morris, the maker of Marlboro menthols, Parliaments and Virginia Slims, says any decision about menthol should be science based.

This week’s meeting is just a start. This summer, the advisory committee will review industry documents to see what’s in menthol cigarettes, something no one outside the industry has had complete access to before now.